Promoting Community-Wide Science,
Math And Technology Literacy Through
School/Community Outreach Network Testbeds

Here's a short concept paper which I think directly addresses the necessity for school/community synergies.

Promoting Community-Wide Science,
Math And Technology Literacy Through
School/Community Outreach Network Testbeds
by Frank Odasz

Synergy with the following is inevitable:

- Internet networking

- Local School/Community Networking

- Science, math, and technology literacy online support

- Lifelong learning for everyone online from the home or library

- Entrepreneurship education beginning at K12 covering the dynamics for creation of employment and learning opportunities through network access and activities.

To turn around the rural economic decline we need to identify specific opportunities for our own kids to find meaningful employment locally. To sustain our communities requires an initiative to find out just what the known benefits of Internet and community networking might be for rural citizens, specifically.

K12 science and math education should reflect synergy with what's known about applying math, science and technology education to employment through telecomputing. Internet access to satellite photography, federal research and development archives, global niche markets, community networks, and vast resource archives, all relate directly to success in an rapidly emerging information economy.

Public understanding of networking benefits is vital for the public support necessary to sustain any school networking effort. Community awareness and involvement in networking is necessary for the success of school networking initiatives that apply to students integrating their science, math, and technical knowledge toward community issues and eventual personal employment.

Educational reform must include programmatic approaches which link science and math teacher training, classroom activities, community science and math literacy, and school/community networking as necessary integrated components for lasting educational reform.

In our electronic society, students are being taught to be citizens, and citizens are being taught to be lifelong learning students. School and community networking efforts on inevitably on a convergent course.

Our shared mission, of some urgency, is to find what works employing citizen's through telecommunications and teaching how to do it through K12 education, using various telecommunications technologies to the home, as well as to the school, on an ongoing basis. Within this context, the tangible benefits of science and math education need to be showcased with an emphasis on creating employment opportunities, and other community benefits.

Multiple, diverse public access testbeds are needed to "research" methods for online teleliteracy training and showcasing science and math resources gleaned from the Internet, in a "community benefits" context. Articulated as follows:

The Clearinghouse for Rural Excellence at Western Montana College of the University of Montana exists to foster connections, communication, and cooperation between rural entities including schools, libraries and businesses. The Clearinghouse seeks to develop in every community catalysts to promote sustainable connectivity/networking and to champion economic development, enhance access to information, and further lifelong learning among citizens.

K12 Entrepreneurial Training Is Needed
The greatest need for citizens is how to earn a living to replace rapidly disappearing traditional vocations. The opportunity exists to kickstart the proliferation of online jobs and small business "win-win" relationships, globally, without having to wait for the natural evolution of such opportunities to unfold.

An online teaching model similar to Mind Extension University is needed. Minigrants will be used to sponsor demonstration online telepreneurial enterprises, with sponsorship of additional course creation projects.

A model is needed for a "Entrepreneurship Cooperative" to provide training, certification, and joint marketing of skills and entrepreneurial online services for citizens. Model online interactive instructional methods will be demonstrated for both K-12 and Higher Education Entrepreneurial replication.

K12 Entrepreneurship And K-100 Lifelong Learning:
Lifelong learning has become an employability survival necessity. The distinctions between what should be taught in K12 schools, and in the current workplace, are blurring, as more powerful connectivity and information management tools are proliferating at every more affordable prices, and with easier to use interfaces. As mentioned, K12 students have an attitudinal mindset that allows them to typically outlearn adults, if given hands-on access to the appropriate technologies. In short, what's good for K12 is good for training the current workforce in most instances; basic literacy, teleliteracy, and infoliteracy.

The need exists to create initial free entry-level training materials, and create a "for profit" series of instructional courses centering on entrepreneurial skills and models for success in the emerging knowledge economy. Citizens need an affordable means of learning how to create online courses and services, and to potentially market them.

Supporting Community-wide Entrepreneurial Training
A entrepreneur training, support, and co-marketing online cooperative will help deliver citizen-created, non-credit lessons, and service delivery models exploring how citizens can learn-to-earn, to stimulate even greater interest among citizens in creating their own ventures. The goal will be to create self-fulfilling knowledge-economy models that respond to existing needs.

Entrepreneurial Cooperative's Benefits And Goals:

- Identify what trainable skills best result in employment.

- Give "good idea" businesses free publicity to assure their success and replication/competition.

- Leverage aggregate services through "online mall" mass marketing.

- Allow citizen's to hang an entrepreneurial shingle from a "marketplace" system that already has a critical mass of interest.

- Publish awareness infomercials to expand citizen's visions of what's possible.

- Just-in-Time subcontracting; Online "temporary help" subcontracting.

- "Non-Academic Certification" by competency level; graphics, desktop publishing, writing, organizing, info-searching, condensing, multimedia authoring. Progressive levels of certification to enhance employability.

- Successes sharing; Ongoing showcase of innovations that work, and failures to learn from.

- Share current "inside track tips" on new technologies, efficiency tricks, entrepreneurial trend profiles, facilitate contacts.

- Identify appropriate entrepreneurial instruction for K-12 and Higher Education

- Facilitate education/business online collaborative opportunities.

- Provide working models of successful decentralized workteam businesses.

Conclusion
Lack of community-wide awareness of the options and benefits of "Inner-net" and "Internet" telecomputing is the biggest barrier to proliferation of community/school networks. The economy and convenience of self-directed, mentored online learning opportunities has yet to be exploited for ongoing training of citizens. Specific benefits, particularly those related to income producing opportunities, must be identified and widely promoted to generate interest in the online participation by citizens.

Today's technologies make it possible for everyone to get involved in networking at some level. Since "Expectations increase with connectivity," we need to focus on ubiquitous engagement of all citizens with multilevel testbed projects measuring the benefits associated with the successive connectivity models. The prevailing themes in support of widespread community networking are:

1. Widespread awareness raising of networking options and benefits
2. Development and promotion of self-help training models
3. Local control and economic sustainability